Unfortunately, this is not an uncommon occurrence here in Louisiana. As stated in a previous post, fisherman use a "rig hook" to tie to the many oil and gas structures in our coastal waters to fish. Usually this is off the bow, and then the fishermen collect in the stern and start fishing, placing most weight in the stern. This results in the self bailing feature of many outboards becoming overwhelmed in a choppy sea and seawater fills the inner hull. Then the float switch of the bilge pump (if equipped) is dead. While concentrating on fishing, enough water has entered the inner hull and usually sloshes to one side capsizing the outboard rather quickly, while the occupants were concentrating on fishing, not situational awareness. Also as pointed out many oil rigs are not manned, and the current in the Gulf of Mexico around the mouth of the river can be rapid, and you cannot swim back to the rig. Even experienced pleasure divers are lost by making this fatal mistake- surfacing too far behind the boat to swim back against the surface current (and not leaving a watch person aboard).
I do not know if this is what happened in this case, but I have seen this play out more than once in my years of fishing and diving this area. These guys got lucky.
Yep, the above scenario is close to what happened to me.
My son, 2 daughters, and I were fishing near shore in my 23 Regulator. Not anchored. Drift fishing over a wreck.
We were catching fish and realized late that the deck of the boat had water then noticed the waterline was of to the base of the engine cowlings.
Seas were not crazy but there was enough wave action that water was splashing over the low transom. Regulators have a large opening back there that has a cover that is sealed to the deck in the transom well and that cover has 2 large hatches to access the pumps and other equipment in the bilge.
The 2 hatches are nice but not large enough to do serious work so I had previously removed the entire cover but failed to seal it back up.
Adding to this the rule float switch had failed.
The minute I noticed the stern sitting low I realized my near catastrophic oversight that was magnified by a failed float switch.
I hit the bilge switch and thankfully the pump fired and emptied the bilge and we came home safely.
I’ve replaced the bilge pump with an Ultra Safety System Senior with high water alarm that’s routed to the helm.
I test the alarm and the bilge switch before every trip.
I had intended to get a backup portable bilge pump but now realizing I haven’t done that yet…
And now I fully understand the importance of sealing off that compartment.
With attention to everything else, I did not notice the graduali settling of the stern until my feet were wet from a little deck water which represented a huge amount of water in the hull (along with flooded pumps and wiring…)
Some ignorance on my part and I consider myself pretty OCD.
Hopefully this can help someone else
